Ultimate Wolverine #5: Armed and Dangerous

Ultimate Wolverine #5 – written by Chris Condon with art by Alex Lins, colors by Bryan Valenza, and lettering by VC’s Cory Petit – pivots away from the laboratories of Directorate X and Wolverine/The Winter Soldier’s torture to show a slice of life in the Eurasian Republic. Set primarily in the city of Rasputingrad, the issue follows Victor Creed as he closes up his bar to hide two mutant children until the Opposition arrives to take them away. He prepares the duo soup and ensures they are kept away from the prying eyes of the Rasputins, knowing the children will become lab rats under their control. It becomes clear that something, or someone, is hunting Creed and the children as the Winter Soldier sneaks into the bar. 

The issue escalates into a brutal brawl between the characters, with Sabretooth indicating a shared history lingering in the air. Limbs go flying as the book flashes back to a time before the Winter Soldier, as Logan and Creed share a drink around a campfire, garbed in nondescript soldier uniforms. Only a patch on their arms indicates any allegiance, a red symbol of arms crossed to form an X. Logan gets Creed to make a promise, to kill him if the Rasputins ever get control of the clawed mutant. The book then returns to the fight as Creed’s contact, Black Widow, appears and helps to knock Logan out. The group piles into her car with a knocked-out Logan, ready to take him back to the Opposition and his former life. 

Condon’s scripting for the issue remains just as tight as the previous installments, striving for efficiency of plot and character to keep the book moving at a clipped pace. Using a simple three-act structure for the individual issue allows the writer to create an excellent narrative ride from present to past and back. The end result is a book that delivers compelling exposition couched either in propulsive action or incisive character work. In this single issue, Condon manages to reveal more about Logan’s past, flesh out this more nuanced version of Sabretooth, and add another layer to Natasha after her appearance in issue #3. 

Almost instinctively, the reader is willing to slow down while reading the flashback sequence due to its arresting shift in pacing. Much of the series thus far moves at a sprint thanks to the genre conventions and heavy use of action, pushed forward by a narrative momentum generated from the tension of Logan’s fractured mind and torture by Directorate X. Here, that rapid rhythm is replaced by a moment of the past, anchoring the reader in a time where Logan could sit and have a drink in the company of someone beyond target or jailer. It’s an effective method to reveal the shared history between the two mutants, making clear the considered life that Logan once had.

That flashback sequence comes to life under Lins’s pencils, as the book never feels more personal than that beat. In the sequence, Lins makes it a point to never fully reveal Logan’s face in complete detail, leaving out or obfuscating elements from his weary expressions. Lins’s choice conveys the bitterness of the sequence, as Logan hides behind the alcohol and convictions to ask something monumental of Creed. In contrast, Creed is fully illuminated by the light of the fire, amused and dismissive at Logan’s request at first. As Sabretooth remains himself in the present, so too is he a fully fleshed-out design in the past. It’s an excellent bit of visual storytelling to convey subtle details of both characters and their role in the present-day storyline. 

Where the book stumbles in its visuals is the later end of the fight sequence, once Black Widow makes her appearance. The fight loses some of its edge as the detailed work and concise blocking become looser with the appearance of the redhead spy. Widow’s expressions and movement of shooting her dart before leaping into a handspring kick read as sloppy on the page, sucking out the brutality and tension from the previous beat during the fight. It’s a shame that the quality dips for those final two pages, as it hampers the cultivated tension of breathtaking beauty and grotesque violence the book has been delivering. It’s not a dip so egregious that it completely ruins the reading experience, but it does make for a bit of disappointment when compared to the high standards of the new Ultimate Universe. 

In contrast, the coloring from Valenza hits every mark thanks to the excellent adaptation to Lins’s style, trading the eerie glow of the typical palette for something that feels more traditional in terms of comic coloring. There’s a rustic quality to many of the tones that fit right into the visual stylings of Creed’s bar, playing up plenty of browns and grays as compelling backgrounds. As a way to heighten tension in the reader and create a sense of urgency, Valenza makes excellent use of heavy blacks and gradient colors when a movement is taken, like Creed rushing into the bar on all fours against a light red backdrop. It’s a dynamic clash of coloring and inky back to sell the vibrant action and killer blocking for the bulk of the issue.